The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has embarked on the removal of abandoned aircraft at Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.
Mr Chris Bature, the General Manager, North Central, FAAN, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Wednesday that 70 per cent of the abandoned aircraft had been removed.
Bature said six out of the eight abandoned aircraft at the airport, which belonged to both government and private operators, were removed between January and May.
He said the remaining two would be cleared within the next three weeks.
According to him, the decision by the management to remove the aircraft is due to security reasons.
The general manger said some of the damaged aircraft parked at the airport hangar could cause insecurity at the airport.
“Unknown objects can be kept in them which may affect the airport security; we have been able to evacuate quite a number of the unused aircraft on ground here in Abuja.
“We allocated the aircraft to different companies that dismantled them and later remove them.
“About 70 per cent of them has already been removed, we have just two that we have issues with but we have responded accordingly.
“ One of them belongs to a state government; hopefully, we believe that before two to three weeks time, we would have finished everything because the aircraft that are abandoned here occupy many valuable spaces,’’ Bature said.
He said FAAN would continue to evacuate any unused aircraft at airports across the country after three months.
Mr Yakubu Dati, the General Manager of Cooperate Communication, FAAN, told NAN that the abandoned aircraft in other airports had also been removed for safety reasons.
Dati said the removal of the aircraft followed the report of the task force set up by the authority to determine measures for the disposal of abandoned aircraft at airports nationwide.
He said the action was necessary because the aircraft constituted security risks and embarrassment to Nigeria as some of them had been parked for more than 10 years.
“Some of these aircraft have been abandoned for about 10 years; we contacted the committee to inform the owners of the abandoned aircraft before they were cleared from the airports.
“Due to failure to abide by this appeal, we carried out the clearing of the airports of these encumbrances,’’ he said.
